MailChimp’s posterous

Want more clicks? Dan Zarrella's new data sug­gests that you should Tweet your links in after­noons, evenings and on week­ends.

The past few months have been very exciting here at Squarespace, as we've been working hard on the UI design for the iPhone app. And now it's finally arrived!

The app allows Squarespace customers to control all the contents of their website right from their iPhone.

From the beginning, our focus was to maintain consistency with the established graphic style of Squarespace, without straying too far from Apple standards. While the app is not very complex in terms of navigation, we thoughtfully designed the flow map and every single screen with usability needs in mind. (via)

On one end of the spectrum, some companies say to themselves “we want our site to look like Apple’s. A really compelling image about our product, with a short explanation right up front.” They expect to impress their customer this way, and while this can actually help, it’s best to evaluate your own customers, objectives, and offerings to be sure this approach is right... On the other end of the spectrum are companies who want their home page to be more like Google. “Just really simple, with one interface element.” This clearly works well for Google, but here’s why... (via)

Ever use email to talk to the person sitting one office down? You're not alone. Most people use the Web to talking to people within their own city, not far-flung contacts, according to a new study by the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.

Experimenters studied data from 100,000 participants that were both Facebook users and email users. They found that most Facebook users' friends are within several miles of their location--not too surprising (see graph above). But they also found that emailing followed the same pattern: 41% of the emails that participants sent were within their own city.

Most reports and punditry on the death of email are a bit premature. The good old fashioned mailing list is still a good way to maintain relationships with customers, especially when done well.

The web-based mailing list manager MailChimp offers list management, tracking and analysis, and custom HTML templates for up to 500 subscribers and 3000 emails a month for free. Paid plans kick in at larger subscriber numbers. Featuring integration with WordPress, Twitter, Salesforce and more, MailChimp is the list manager of choice for an impressive list of heavyweights including Mozilla, Intel, Canon, Fujitsu, Staples and more.

Pro Tip: MailChimp has a well-documented API that allows you to integrate the service with your own existing applications, tools, content management system or CRM solution. There’s a growing list of plug-ins already created for a number of platforms.

I talk to companies all the time about being human at a distance, and how these new social tools allow us to engage in human business, which I consider more relationship-driven than numbers-driven. There are lots of things I mean when I say this, and lots of ways to implement it online. I’ll give a few here as a starting point for your consideration. As we uncover how human business works, these topics are pertinent to how we weave: to move from solo player to interconnected node.

Click through for some excellent tips & food for thought from Chris Brogan.

Booklist: MailChimp Co-founder Ben Chestnut

October 20, 2009 · by Practical eCommerce Staff

In Booklist we ask ecommerce personalities about the books they read and what they like about them. For this list we asked Ben Chestnut, co-founder of MailChimp, a self-service email marketing firm.

 As the MailChimp website explains, the company was built on the pragmatic notion that "People are too busy running their businesses to learn how to code HTML emails. Email marketing is so easy, a monkey could be doing it for them."

 

Brand Gap

By Marty Neumeier

"This is a great book that one of our designers recommended to me. It's a fast read too. Pretty much sums up everything I believe about branding and user experience."

Built To Last

By Jim Collins

"This was a book that helped me (and my co-founders) get through the rocky transition period that I think every entrepreneur goes through. There's a moment where you think, 'Gosh, I've been going at it for almost 10 years now. Is this ever going to take off?' All great companies take time. The story of 3M was hands-down my absolute favorite."

--

The E-Myth

By Michael Gerber

"This book should be required reading for anybody thinking about starting a business. I think it's probably the best business book a new entrepreneur could ever read. It will set your paradigms in the proper place: work harder at working smarter."

--

Blue Ocean Strategy

By W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne

"A couple years ago I got a hunch that obsessively following my competition was a stupid idea and even hurt our business. I wondered if 'building stuff our customers actually need' was a better approach (radical concept, I know). At about the same time, I stumbled upon this book. I deleted all bookmarks to my competitors' websites and never looked back. I'm not sure if I love this book because it's useful, or because it helps me explain and justify some of my seemingly whacky, counterintuitive ideas."

--

iWoz

By Steve Wozniak

"If you run a technology company and work closely with programmers and engineers, this book explains a lot. You'll get insight into what drives hardcore nerds and what's at the core of the Apple brand."

--

Books for Fun

Company

By Max Barry

"Hilarious, fictional book about experiments being done to office workers. It's insane but partly because so much of it is true. Entrepreneurs will love it because it's a reminder as to why you got out of the corporate world."

--

Dealers of Lightning

By Michael Hiltzik

"Technology is actually just making history repeat itself faster. This book is a great history lesson that'll make you smack your forehead and yell "Doh!" over and over."

--

Mother Teresa: In My Own Words

"This is a book I bought for a friend's mother for Christmas. I was just flipping through the pages before wrapping it up and couldn't put it down. Had to go buy another copy for myself. It's a good book for keeping some perspective."

I have a pretty strict schedule: I’m at work by 9 and I leave by 5:30. I realized at some point that there’s only a given amount of creative time I can squeeze out of myself and if I try to extend that, it either doesn’t really lead to proper results or you have to pay a price the next day. So I’ve found that I can do maybe 3 or 4 hours of hardcore creative thinking where you sit there and really try to come up with a concept. Then there’s another 4 hours of concentrated execution. I just don’t have more in me. Even though it’s a very strict amount of time, and sometimes I wish I could sustain another 2 hours, I’m surprised by how much I feel I can get done when I started this kind of schedule a few years back. (via)

Think twice about that huge font and those glassy icons: Look and feel is the first thing we see and notice about most web apps and is often critical to an app's user experience, adoption, and ultimate success. (via)

There's never been a better time for small businesses to stop slogging along in their separate trenches and find a way to get together. These businesses have taken the time to make their applications work with each others' products, and now they can present them to customers as a suite of services instead of one-offs. Beautiful, isn't it?

One of the developments that caught the biggest buzz out of this year's SXSW (that's South by Southwest for newbs) music/film/interactive conclave in Austin is the recent unveiling of the Small Business Web. It's a collaboration among several technology startups focused on small-business apps, including BatchBlue, Freshbooks, MailChimp, Outright and Shoeboxed.